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Speaker 1: Imagine, imagine if you will, standing in the suffocating darkness

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of a tomb.

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Speaker 2: Oh wow, setting the scene.

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Speaker 1: Immediately, I have to You're in this tomb, right and

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it has been sealed shut for thousands of.

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Speaker 2: Years, just absolute, profound silence.

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Speaker 1: Exactly. The air is stale, it's thick with the dust

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of antiquity. You are completely surrounded by the ancient world.

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And right above the grand stone entrance, curved deeply into

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the rock face, is.

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Speaker 2: A warning, a very clear warning.

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Speaker 1: Very clear. It is a promise of complete and utter

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ruin to absolutely anyone who dares disturb the piece within.

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Speaker 2: And you see it, you read it.

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Speaker 1: You read it, and yet human curiosity just pushes you

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forward anyway. Or uh, let's bring the scenario.

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Speaker 2: Much closer to home, into the living room.

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Speaker 1: Right into the living room. Imagine you are sitting on

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your couch. You're scrolling online late at night, and you

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buy a mundane, slightly quirky oil painting to fill an

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empty space on your wall.

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Speaker 2: We've all done it, just looking for some decor.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so you hang it up, but almost immediately lee

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your life begins to unravel into unmitigated, inexplicable chaos.

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Speaker 2: The shadows start moving exactly.

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Speaker 1: You hear whispers in the hallway, you see things out

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of the corner of your eye. Tragedy strikes your family out.

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Speaker 2: Of nowhere, which begs the question it.

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Speaker 1: Does is it just a string of terrible, profound bad

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luck or is there an invisible, malevolent force at play

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in the world. Welcome to Thrilling Threads. I'm so glad

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you're joining us today.

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Speaker 2: It is a really dark, yet deeply revealing journey we

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have ahead of us today.

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Speaker 1: It really is the.

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Speaker 2: Narratives we're exploring touch on fears that have really plagued

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humanity since we first learned to tell stories around a fire.

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Speaker 1: They really do. So today's mission is based on a

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truly fascinating video essay we've.

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Speaker 2: Been reviewing, a really comprehensive one.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's this great historicalisticle detailing the top ten creepiest

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alleged curses and recorded history, along with a few very

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notable honorable mentions.

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Speaker 2: So we aren't just summarizing it.

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Speaker 1: No, definitely not. Our goal on this episode of Thrilling

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Threads isn't just to sit here and recite scary stories

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to you. We want to understand why these legends endure

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across generation.

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Speaker 2: Why we need them essentially?

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Speaker 1: Right? Why do we cling so desperately to the idea

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of the curse object or the doomed bloodline? Okay, let's

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unpack this. Because I have always had a sheer, unabashed

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enthusiasm for the macabre and the mysterious.

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Speaker 2: That's very true about you.

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Speaker 1: I can't help it to me. It seems like curses

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are humanity's way of making sense of random, senseless tragedy.

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When terrible things happen, we want someone or something to blame,

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and a curse provides a very convenient scapegoat.

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Speaker 2: I would actually push back on the idea that they

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are merely convenient.

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Speaker 1: Scapegoats though, Oh really, how so?

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Speaker 2: While they certainly serve that psychological function, the patterns hiding

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behind these stories are far more complex. When you strip

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away the supernatural veneer of the video essays countdown, you

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find that these curses are almost always rooted in universal,

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often really uncomfortable, human experiences like.

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Speaker 1: What kind of experiences?

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Speaker 2: Things like unchecked greed, profound guilt, and the violation of

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what we deem to be sacred. Oh I see, Yeah,

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The act is a mirror reflecting our own deepest cultural

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and personal anxieties. It is less about finding a scapegoat

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and more about attempting to enforce a moral order on

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an indifferent universe.

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Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, that is a much heavier way to look

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at it, but I totally see your point. We are

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basically trying to invent rules for a chaotic world exactly.

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Speaker 2: We want the bad things to happen for a reason.

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Speaker 1: Right, And before we get into the heavy historical stuff,

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I want to ask you the listener, a direct question.

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Speaker 2: Think about your own home for a second.

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Speaker 1: Yes, have you ever owned an object that just felt

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I don't know, wrong, just off Maybe something you picked

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up at a dusty flea market, or an old piece

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of furniture passed down from a distant relative, and every

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time you walked past it, the hairs on the back

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of your neck just stood.

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Speaker 2: Up a visceral reaction.

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Speaker 1: Keep that feeling in mind, that distinct, unsettled intuition. Hold

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onto that as we begin to unravel these threads. Because

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we're starting our journey not in ancient crypts or ruined temples.

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Speaker 2: No, we are starting right in the modern living room.

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Speaker 1: We really are.

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Speaker 2: We are entering what I categorize as the uncanny Valley

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of domestic life.

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Speaker 1: The uncanny valley I like that term.

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Speaker 2: It's the realm where the most ordinary, everyday items inexplicably

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become vessels for our deepest, most primal fears. There is

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a unique, specific horror in an object of comfort turning

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against you within the supposed safety of your own home.

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Speaker 1: And nothing represents comfort turning to tear quite like a

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childhood toy. Let's talk about the Curse of Annabel, a classic. Now,

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thanks to the massive influence of Hollywood, a lot of

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people picture Annabel as this terrifying, cracked porcelain Victorian doll with.

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Speaker 2: The glowing eyes and the sinister smile, right.

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Speaker 1: But according to our source material, the reality is arguably

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far more unsettling, because the real Annabel was a seemingly normal,

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entirely mundane, raggedy doll, just cloth and yarn, just a

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simple mass produced cloth toy with red yarn for hair

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and a painted on smile. But this specific doll was

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investigated by the famous paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine.

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Speaker 2: Warren, and the Warren's involvement is really what catapulted this

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specific cloth doll into the realm of legend.

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Speaker 1: They took it very seriously, didn't they.

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Speaker 2: They did. They claimed that moving Annabelle was an action

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they did not take lightly at all, treating it with

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the kind of caution one might reserve for a live explosive.

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Speaker 1: A live explosive, that's wild. So how did they even

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get it?

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Speaker 2: The doll was originally given to them after its first owner,

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who was a nursing student, experienced an escalating series of

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terrifying events, and it started small, very subtle. The initial

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reports were seemingly small things. The owner claimed the doll

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could move entirely by itself, shifting positions on a bed

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or appearing in different.

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Speaker 1: Rooms, which is creepy enough on its own.

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Speaker 2: But the narrative quickly pivots from subtle movement to distinct malice.

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Speaker 1: It escalates so fast. You have a simple cloth doll,

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a toy design to bring comfort to a child, but

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then intense psychological and physical trauma starts befalling people connected

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to it.

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Speaker 2: The nightmare story is the one that really stands out.

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Speaker 1: Yes, one of the most chilling details from the source

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text involves the boyfriend of the nurse who owned the doll.

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He falls asleep on the couch one night and has

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this vivid, suffocating nightmare about the doll physically crawling up

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his legs and attacking him.

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Speaker 2: It's terrifying.

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Speaker 1: We need to pause and think about how relatable and

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primal that fear is. Dolls are inherently creepy, precisely because

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they mimic humanity, but they lack a soul.

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Speaker 2: They are an empty vessel.

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Speaker 1: Right they sit there on the shelf with those dead,

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unblinking eyes. To dream of one animating, crossing the room

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and physically attacking you, it's pure distilled nightmare fuel.

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Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is the trajectory of that nightmare.

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Speaker 1: How do you mean?

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Speaker 2: Well, it didn't remain a bad dream locked within the

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confines of a sleeping mind. According to the accounts in

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the Countdown, this supposedly demon possessed dull crossed the boundary

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from psychological terror into tangible physical reality.

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Speaker 1: Oh right, the physical attacks exactly.

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Speaker 2: It allegedly slashed its victims, leaving physical marks on their bodies.

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Speaker 1: Just writing that off as a scratch from a pet

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wouldn't work if you literally see it happen, And it.

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Speaker 2: Went as far as actually stabbing a homicide detective.

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Speaker 1: That is the both that gets me. Let's focus on

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that detective for a second. Imagine you are a homicide detective.

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Speaker 2: You are grounded entirely in the material world.

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Speaker 1: You see the absolute worst of humanity every single day.

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Your entire career is grounded in physical evidence, blood spatter,

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clear motives, logical deductions.

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Speaker 2: Cold hard facts.

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Speaker 1: So to have a hardened investigator allegedly attacked and stabbed

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by a mass produced child's toy, what does that do

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to a person's worldview? The cognitive dissonance must be absolutely staggering.

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Speaker 2: It completely shatters the framework of logic that a detective

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relies able to function. It has to, and regardless of

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what one believes about the objective truth of the Warren's

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claims or the detective's experience, the cultural impact of this

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narrative is undeniable. A simple cloth toy evolved into a massive,

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highly lucrative Hollywood horror franchise, We Really Did It, inspired

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the Conjuring series, and branched off into its own entire

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horror trilogy, generating millions of dollars.

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Speaker 1: It totally blurred the lines between alleged true crime, paranormal investigation,

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and blockbuster entertainment. We took a story about profound domestic

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terror and turned it into popcorn fodder.

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Speaker 2: We commercialized the fear exactly.

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Speaker 1: And speaking of domestic items that take on a dark

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life of their own, we have to talk about the

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infamous eBay haunted.

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Speaker 2: Painting ah The Hands Resist Him.

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Speaker 1: Yes, the official title of the piece is The Hands

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Resist Him, and it was painted in nineteen seventy two

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by an oil painter named Bill Stoneham.

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Speaker 2: The timeline of this object's notoriety is really crucial to.

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Speaker 1: Understand here right because it wasn't famous right.

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Speaker 2: Away, not at all. The piece did not gain its

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infamous cursted reputation immediately upon its creation in the nineteen seventies.

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It wasn't until the year two thousand, when it was

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listed in an online eBay auction, that the cursed narrative

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truly exploded into the public consciousness.

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Speaker 1: I have to laugh just thinking about the wild West

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early days of eBay. It was completely unregulated, the Internet

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was still relatively young, and the site was primarily characterized

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by just how bizarre the listings were. People were selling

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grilled cheese sandwiches with the face of religious figures burned

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into them.

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Speaker 2: It was a digital garage sale for the bizarre.

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Speaker 1: A total free for all, especially when it came to

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the supernatural. But the backstory of this specific painting is

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deeply unsettling.

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Speaker 2: Because of the gallery.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, before it ever reached the Internet, it was initially

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displayed in the prestigious Finegarten gallery in Beverly Hills, and

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within a year of it being shown there, both the

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owner of the gallery and the art critic who reviewed

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the painting were dead.

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Speaker 2: The suddenness of those deaths is really the foundational seed

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of the cursed narrative, just a coincidence, a coincidence perhaps,

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but human nature abhors a coincidence when mortality is involved.

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We need a reason we do.

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Speaker 1: And after those initial tragedies, the painting eventually made its

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way into the possession of the renowned actor John Marley.

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Speaker 2: From The Godfather fame exactly.

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Speaker 1: He held on to it for a time, but following

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his death, the painting completely disappeared, just vanished, vanished from

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the wealthy, prestigious circles of Beverly Hills, and eventually resurfaced

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in the most unlikely and atmospheric of places, an abandoned brewery,

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an abandoned brewery. It's like a horror movie writing itself.

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Speaker 2: It really is perfect framing.

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Speaker 1: Imagine exploring a decaying industrial building surrounded by rusted metal

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and broken glass and finding a pristine oil painting hidden

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in the debris. A couple discovers it there, decides to

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bring it into their home, and within just a few

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days they become totally unnerved by odd occurrences.

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Speaker 2: At night, specifically involving their daughter.

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Speaker 1: Right their young daughdo starts complaining about the painting, claiming

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she is terrified of it, and the imagery of the

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painting itself is already eerie.

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Speaker 2: It is deeply unsettling art.

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Speaker 1: It features a young boy staring forward and next to

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him is a life sized female doll with vacant eyes,

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and behind them, disembodied hands are pressing against a glass door.

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Speaker 2: Just esthetically, it's meant to provoke anxiety, and.

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Speaker 1: The couple's claim was that at night, the figures in

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the canvas would actually move.

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Speaker 2: The specifics of those alleged movements are what elevate the

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story from a creepy anecdote to a full blown supernatural thriller.

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Speaker 1: What were they doing?

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Speaker 2: The female doll would allegedly brandish a gun a gun, yes,

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introducing an element of active lethal threat, and the little

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boy in the painting would literally attempt to escape the

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canvas and flee into the real world.

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Speaker 1: Think about the visceral terror of that. A static image,

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something you literally nail to your wall to simply look at,

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suddenly chain jing its physical composition when you turn off

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the living room lights.

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Speaker 2: It defies logic.

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Speaker 1: You buy art to enhance your home, to bring beauty

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or thought into your space. For that art to suddenly

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become a window for a tiny, armed nightmare to enter

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your reality, it breaks every rule of how the physical

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world is supposed to work.

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Speaker 2: It illustrates the psychological impact of art in a fascinating way.

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Art is fundamentally meant to evoke emotion. Sure, it is

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a one way communication from the artist to the viewer,

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but in this case, a medium design for passive aesthetic

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appreciation becomes an active engine of terror.

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Speaker 1: That's a great way to put it.

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Speaker 2: When the subjects of a painting are said to break

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the boundaries of their frame, it violates our fundamental understanding

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of physics. We expect domestic objects to be entirely passive.

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When they become active agents of fear. Our sense of

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safety within our own homes is completely shattered.

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Speaker 1: Which transitions us perfectly to a curse that didn't just

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shatter the peace of one or two homes, but caused

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a literal nationwide panic crying. I am talking about the

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blazing curse of the crying Boy. Let's set the scene

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for you.

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Speaker 2: Take us back.

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Speaker 1: It's the United Kingdom in the nineteen seventies and eighties.

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There is a string of devastating, catastrophic house fires across

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the country. Homes are being burned to the ground, lives.

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Speaker 2: Are being ruined and terrible tragedy.

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Speaker 1: But fire investigators start noticing one incredibly spooky, recurring detail.

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In the charred ashes and smoking rubble of these destroyed homes,

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one single item keeps surviving, perfectly.

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Speaker 2: Intact, completely untouched by the flames.

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Speaker 1: A mass produced nineteen fifties painting by Italian artist Giovanni Bruggelin,

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depicting a young boy with heavy tears streaming down his face.

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Speaker 2: The visual contrast described in the historical accounts is astounding.

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The surrounding house is reduced to blackened wood and gray ash.

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Entire lifetimes of possessions incinerated yet the portrait remains untouched,

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resisting the flames entirely.

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Speaker 1: It defies explanation.

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Speaker 2: Well as the source of material notes. One investigator acts

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commented that it was almost as if the painting had

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been coated in some highly effective fire resistant substance.

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Speaker 1: Oh so a logical explanation, that.

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Speaker 2: Is, the logical material explanation, But for the general public,

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rational explanations were entirely overshadowed by the sheer, eerie repetition

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of the phenomena.

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Speaker 1: Imagine being a homeowner standing in the smoking ruins of

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your family home. Everything you own, all your memories, your photographs,

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your clothing, just destroyed, devastating, and as you sift through

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the warm ashes, you look down and see this perfectly pristine,

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weeping child's face just staring back at you. It would

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feel like a deliberate, cruel taunt from the universe.

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Speaker 2: And this is exactly where the dynamic of mass hysteria

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comes into play, a sterea that was heavily amplified and

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capitalized upon by the media.

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Speaker 1: The tabloids got involved.

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Speaker 2: Specifically, the British tabloid newspaper The Sun seized upon this

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spooky coincidence. Yeah, they didn't just report on the fires.

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Speaker 1: Why did they do?

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Speaker 2: They actively organized mass bonfires for people to bring their

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crime boy painting and destroy them in public squares.

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Speaker 1: Are you serious mass bonfires?

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Speaker 2: Yes? This is a profound moment of collective psychology. Think

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about it, A modern industrialized twentieth century society engaging in

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a literal, communal purging ritual.

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Speaker 1: That is wild.

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Speaker 2: They were holding which trial style bonfires to destroy a

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mass produced piece of kitsch art, driven entirely by a

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tabloid frenzy.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I can hear the rationalization now, I'm not

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taking any chances, would you? That was the prevailing sentiment.

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People were terrified that hanging this cheap print on their

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wall was an invitation for an inferno.

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Speaker 2: Better safe than sorry, even if it defies logic exactly.

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Speaker 1: But you know, while these domestic objects, the raggedy doll,

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the eBay painting, the weeping boy print seemed to target

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and punish individuals or specific families, other curses operate on

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a much grander geopolitical.

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Speaker 2: Scale, moving from the home to the empire.

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Speaker 1: Yes, some curses seem designed to punish entire empires and

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bloodlines for the sin of unchecked greed.

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Speaker 2: We are indeed shifting from the domestic sphere to the

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grand stage of human history. We are going to explore

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how curses function as a mythical defense mechanism against the

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theft of the sacred or the violent plundering of incredibly valuable.

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Speaker 1: Resources, which brings us to the formidable, legendary curse of

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the Aztec gold. Let's dive into the history here.

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Speaker 2: This is a complex one.

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Speaker 1: It is driven by an insatiable, overwhelming greed for the

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undiscovered wealth of the New World. The conquistador Hernan Cortes

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arrived at the spectacular, thriving as tech city of Tenoctelin.

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Speaker 2: A massive advanced civilization.

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Speaker 1: Initially, the historical record suggests it seemed like the start

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of a diplomatic or at least amicable relationship. The Aztecs,

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perhaps out of caution or custom, presented Cortes and his

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men with lavish, unimaginable gifts of gold.

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Speaker 2: A gesture of wealth and power.

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Speaker 1: But rather than appeasing the Spaniards or opening a channel

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of fair trade, these gifts only poured gasoline on the

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fire of Cortes's greed. He saw a fraction of their

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wealth and decided he wanted it all.

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Speaker 2: The fatal flaw.

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Speaker 1: Imprisoned the Aztec ruler Maktezuma, attempting to gain total authoritarian

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control of the city and its vast riches. Ultimately, Cortes

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invaded and destroyed the city, bringing about the bloody, devastating

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downfall of the Aztec Empire, which was one of the greatest,

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most advanced civilizations known in the world at that time.

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Speaker 2: It is a period of history drenched in blood, betrayal,

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and colonial violence.

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Speaker 1: Deeply dark history.

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Speaker 2: And according to the legend highlighted in our source, the

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gold that Cortes lusted after so fervently did not come

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without a severe metaphysical price, the curse. Yes. In retaliation

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for the destruction of their entire civilization, the Aztecs are

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said to have placed a powerful, lasting curse upon the

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plundered gold. The treasure was allegedly hidden away by the

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surviving Aztecs and eventually buried in what is now the

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United States, and it's still out there to this very day.

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Despite centuries of searching, it has still not been discovered.

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Speaker 1: Before we talk about the ultimate fate of Cortes, I

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want to make something very clear to you, the listener

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We are looking at this purely through the lens of

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the historical text provided by the.

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Speaker 2: Countdown very important context.

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Speaker 1: We are taking absolutely no sides in the political or

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historical debates that still rage today regarding colonization. Our source

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material notes that Cortes left behind a highly mixed legacy,

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depending entirely on who you ask and what perspective of

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history they champion.

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Speaker 2: There are two very distinct views presented.

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Speaker 1: Right to many Mexicans, he is still widely regarded as

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a murderous villain who brought the devastating plague of western

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colonization and disease to their sovereign lands. Conversely, to the Spanish,

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he is often viewed as an important historical figure who

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expanded their territory and helped their empire reach the pinnacle

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of its global power. We are merely reporting the text

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perspective on his deeply polarized, controversial legacy.

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Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, the curse

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aspect reveals itself most clearly in Cortez's ultimate personal fate.

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Speaker 1: What actually happened to him.

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Speaker 2: Conquering an entire empire for its unimaginable wealth, despite tearing

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down a civilization to fill the coffers of Spain. Cortezwin

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completely broke.

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Speaker 1: Wow all that gold, and he ended up broke.

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Speaker 2: He begrudgingly returned to the Americas later in life to

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seek his fortune once again, desperate to reclaim his former glory,

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but ultimately died entirely penniless. Yeah, and he did not

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die peacefully. The text notes he suffered from painful afflictions

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like dysentery and plorisy.

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Speaker 1: I think we need to explain what that actually means physically,

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because it is grim. Dysentery is horrific enough of violent

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intestinal disease, but plurisy it's agonizing for those who might

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not know. Plurisy is a condition where the tissues that

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line your lungs and chest cavity become severely inflamed. It

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makes every single breath feel like a sharp, stabbing agony

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in your chest.

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Speaker 2: You literally cannot breathe without profound pain.

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Speaker 1: So he conquered the world for gold, destroyed millions of lives,

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and died broke, sick and gasping for air in immense agony.

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It feels like the universe balancing the scales.

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Speaker 2: I would actually push back on calling get the universe

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balancing the scales.

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Speaker 1: Oh, you don't think so.

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Speaker 2: We have to ask ourselves if that is a cosmic

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magical force at work or just the inevitable downfall of

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an empire builder who overextended his reach, alienated his allies,

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and succumbed to the medical realities of his era.

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Speaker 1: The logical explanation again.

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Speaker 2: People love the curse narrative because it applies a neat

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moral framework to messy geopolitical realities. The curse of the

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Aztec Gold isn't necessarily about magical incantations spoken over a

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pile of coins, and what is it? It serves as

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the ultimate narrative revenge. It is the concept of karmic

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retribution made manifest in storytelling. A destroyed civilization gets the final,

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lasting victory in the historical narrative against a greedy conqueror.

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Speaker 1: Oh, I love that the gold remains hidden from his

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empire and the conqueror dies with nothing.

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Speaker 2: The narrative revenge outlasts the physical empire.

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Speaker 1: That is profound, and it ties directly into another legendary

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curse of ad antiquity, one that also involves immense wealth

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and the violation of sacred spaces. Yes, the curse of

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King Tutsiquomen's tomb. For hundreds of years, scientists, archaeologists, and

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ruthless grave roppers disturbed the resting places of ancient Egyptians,

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seemingly completely ignorant of or just uncaring about, the explicit

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warnings carved into the stone.

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Speaker 2: The hubris is staggering.

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Speaker 1: It is. The text notes that there is a specific

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curse reserved only for the most evil of blasphemers who

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disturbed the dead, and no tomb was as perfectly preserved

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or brought on as much alleged misfortune as.

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Speaker 2: King tuts The timeline of this specific curse is what

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propelled it from local superstition into the global consciousness.

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Speaker 1: How quickly did it happen?

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Speaker 2: Very quickly. The burial chamber of King Tutana Kaman, untouched

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for millennia, was famously opened in November of nineteen twenty two.

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By January of nineteen twenty four, just a little over

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a year later, three men intimately involved in the excavation

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process were already dead.

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Speaker 1: The warning above the door it's the oldest cinematic trope

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in the book. And these highly educated, incredibly wealthy excavators

447
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just marched right past it with their lanterns and their notebooks.

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Speaker 2: Arrogance masked de science, and the.

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Speaker 1: Curse didn't just affect the laborers or the local workers.

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It went right to the top of the aristocratic food.

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Speaker 2: Chain, the financiers.

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Speaker 1: Yes, the first major victim was the wealthy earl who

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actually financed the entire expedition. And how did this incredibly wealthy,

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powerful man who survived the harsh desert environment actually.

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Speaker 2: Die a mosquito bite?

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Speaker 1: A mosquito bite. He was bitten by mosquito. The bite

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became infected and it led to fatal blood poisoning. A

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tiny insect took down the man who funded the plunder

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of a Faroh, it's incredibly mundane, and over the next

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few years a number of others connected to the dig

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followed him to the grave, with the curse supposedly claiming

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its final ultimate victim in Howard Carter himself, the expedition lader,

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the very man who physically broke the seal and opened

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the tomb.

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Speaker 2: We must consider the intense cultural and media context.

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Speaker 1: Of that era, the nineteen twenties.

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Speaker 2: Yes, the discovery of King TuS Mummy launched an unprecedented

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massive international media frenzy. It made front page headlines in

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every major newspaper across the globe.

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Speaker 1: It was basically the biggest story in the world.

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Speaker 2: The world was captivated by the goal, the history, the mystery.

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When you have an event of that magnitude, any subsequent misfortune,

473
00:23:25,480 --> 00:23:28,519
even a mundane infection from a mosquito, is going to

474
00:23:28,519 --> 00:23:32,400
be magnified and scrutinized through a lens of superstition.

475
00:23:32,240 --> 00:23:34,119
Speaker 1: Especially when it comes to grave robbing.

476
00:23:34,400 --> 00:23:37,920
Speaker 2: Right. Disturbing the dead for fame and profit is an ancient,

477
00:23:38,039 --> 00:23:41,759
deeply ingrained human taboo. When the media needed to keep

478
00:23:41,759 --> 00:23:44,400
the momentum of the story going after the initial excitement

479
00:23:44,440 --> 00:23:47,519
of the discovery faded, the sudden deaths of the wealthy

480
00:23:47,559 --> 00:23:50,000
financiers provided the perfect fuel.

481
00:23:50,240 --> 00:23:52,359
Speaker 1: So the curse was basically good for business.

482
00:23:52,519 --> 00:23:56,480
Speaker 2: Exactly the narrative of the curse actually sustained the global interest,

483
00:23:56,799 --> 00:24:01,279
intertwining ancient Egyptian mysticism with the modern nineteen twenties news cycle.

484
00:24:01,359 --> 00:24:05,119
Speaker 1: They needed a reason why these seemingly untouchable, wealthy upper

485
00:24:05,119 --> 00:24:08,519
class explorers were dropping dead. A mosquito bite is boring.

486
00:24:09,000 --> 00:24:11,839
A pharaoh's ancient curse sells papers.

487
00:24:11,519 --> 00:24:13,440
Speaker 2: It creates a mythological narrative.

488
00:24:13,079 --> 00:24:16,319
Speaker 1: And speaking of the wealthy facing unimaginable tragedy. Here's where

489
00:24:16,319 --> 00:24:19,599
it gets really interesting. Let's examine the Hope Diamond.

490
00:24:19,319 --> 00:24:21,079
Speaker 2: Ah, another legendary artifact.

491
00:24:21,400 --> 00:24:23,839
Speaker 1: This isn't just a cursed tomb anchored in the desert.

492
00:24:23,960 --> 00:24:27,519
It's a cursed, highly mobile object that has been passed

493
00:24:27,519 --> 00:24:31,119
from hand to hand, continent to continent for centuries, a

494
00:24:31,119 --> 00:24:34,440
traveling curse. The story starts in a deep Indian mine

495
00:24:34,480 --> 00:24:38,480
in the sixteen hundreds, and supposedly a dark, heavy curse

496
00:24:38,559 --> 00:24:42,079
has followed anyone greedy enough or arrogant enough to possess

497
00:24:42,119 --> 00:24:44,960
this enormous, mesmerizing blue gem.

498
00:24:45,279 --> 00:24:48,400
Speaker 2: Its early history is explicitly described in the text as

499
00:24:48,799 --> 00:24:50,880
spotty and deeply bloodstained.

500
00:24:50,960 --> 00:24:51,920
Speaker 1: Blood stained is right.

501
00:24:52,319 --> 00:24:54,640
Speaker 2: The chain of possession reads less like a ledger of

502
00:24:54,680 --> 00:24:58,559
wealth and more like a catalog of horrific, gruesome fates.

503
00:24:58,640 --> 00:24:59,519
Speaker 1: Give me an example.

504
00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:03,160
Speaker 2: The first recorded European owner, a man named Tavernier, was

505
00:25:03,160 --> 00:25:06,880
supposedly stricken with a terrible fatal fever shortly after obtaining

506
00:25:06,880 --> 00:25:08,559
the gem, dying far from home.

507
00:25:08,799 --> 00:25:10,880
Speaker 1: And it only gets more gruesome from there. We have

508
00:25:10,920 --> 00:25:13,640
a report and the source of one man who briefly possessed,

509
00:25:13,640 --> 00:25:16,559
the diamond being literally torn apart by dogs just brutal.

510
00:25:16,720 --> 00:25:19,640
Think about the sheer violence of that death. Eventually, the

511
00:25:19,680 --> 00:25:22,440
diamond makes its upward climb into the very pinnacle of

512
00:25:22,480 --> 00:25:23,519
global wealth.

513
00:25:23,200 --> 00:25:24,680
Speaker 2: And power, the French crown.

514
00:25:25,000 --> 00:25:27,519
Speaker 1: The stone is passed down through the monarchy until it

515
00:25:27,599 --> 00:25:31,160
rests with King Louis the sixteenth and his wife Marie Antoinette.

516
00:25:31,200 --> 00:25:34,279
And we all know the history there revolution. The French

517
00:25:34,359 --> 00:25:37,839
monarchy was obliterated by revolution, and both the king and

518
00:25:38,000 --> 00:25:43,440
queen were publicly violently beheaded via the guillotine. The diamond,

519
00:25:43,599 --> 00:25:47,400
representing all their hoarded wealth, was stolen during the chaos

520
00:25:47,400 --> 00:25:50,759
of the revolution and eventually recut to hide its identity.

521
00:25:50,960 --> 00:25:54,640
Speaker 2: Yet the tragedies continue to follow the stone regardless of

522
00:25:54,680 --> 00:25:55,200
its shape.

523
00:25:55,240 --> 00:25:57,079
Speaker 1: It didn't matter that it looked different.

524
00:25:56,839 --> 00:26:00,000
Speaker 2: Not at all. Lord Francis Hope, the man whose name

525
00:26:00,160 --> 00:26:03,599
the diamond now bears, suffered a complete reversal of fortune

526
00:26:03,759 --> 00:26:06,400
and went entirely bankrupt, forced to sell his.

527
00:26:06,480 --> 00:26:08,960
Speaker 1: Assets, so it ruined him financially.

528
00:26:08,599 --> 00:26:12,119
Speaker 2: And physically for others, a later owner reportedly drowned in

529
00:26:12,160 --> 00:26:15,400
a tragic shipwreck. The diamond allegedly moved through the hands

530
00:26:15,400 --> 00:26:19,119
of multiple rulers and socialites, seeing entire royal lines and

531
00:26:19,200 --> 00:26:23,000
wealthy families come to abrupt, tragic and often violent.

532
00:26:22,880 --> 00:26:25,720
Speaker 1: Ends, until it finally comes to rest where it is today,

533
00:26:26,000 --> 00:26:30,079
displayed behind bulletproof glass at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington,

534
00:26:30,160 --> 00:26:33,720
d C. A public display and the public reaction to

535
00:26:33,799 --> 00:26:37,480
the Smithsonian acquiring it is what I find so fascinating.

536
00:26:38,039 --> 00:26:42,359
Some Americans legitimately wondered if bringing this massive, blood soaked

537
00:26:42,400 --> 00:26:45,319
diamond into the Capitol was a good idea for the country.

538
00:26:45,440 --> 00:26:46,759
Speaker 2: They were genuinely afraid.

539
00:26:47,079 --> 00:26:52,000
Speaker 1: Museum leaders actually received numerous frantic, terrified letters from citizens

540
00:26:52,240 --> 00:26:55,319
begging them to reject the diamond, convinced that bringing it

541
00:26:55,319 --> 00:26:58,400
to American soil would cause a catastrophic disaster for the

542
00:26:58,559 --> 00:27:02,440
entire nation. National supers and those public fears weren't exactly

543
00:27:02,599 --> 00:27:06,799
quieted when reports started circulating about the terrible immediate misfortunes

544
00:27:06,839 --> 00:27:08,920
of a man known as Postman.

545
00:27:08,480 --> 00:27:09,920
Speaker 2: Todd, the man who delivered it.

546
00:27:10,039 --> 00:27:13,960
Speaker 1: Yes, the actual mail carrier who was tasked with delivering

547
00:27:13,960 --> 00:27:16,559
the diamond to the museum suffered a string of terrible

548
00:27:16,640 --> 00:27:18,240
luck right after dropping it off.

549
00:27:18,559 --> 00:27:22,799
Speaker 2: This specific narrative provides a brilliant revealing lens into how

550
00:27:22,880 --> 00:27:28,319
society views extreme concentrated wealth. How So, extreme wealth and

551
00:27:28,400 --> 00:27:34,200
political power inevitably bring extreme isolation, volatile political turmoil, and

552
00:27:34,279 --> 00:27:38,880
often sudden tragic downfalls. We see a monarch beheaded in

553
00:27:38,920 --> 00:27:42,240
a violent revolution, or a wealthy lord go completely bankrupt

554
00:27:42,319 --> 00:27:44,960
due to poor investments and shifting economies, as we blame

555
00:27:45,000 --> 00:27:49,000
the rock exactly, rather than attribute those events to the natural,

556
00:27:49,119 --> 00:27:53,880
volatile consequences of human power structures and societal inequality, we

557
00:27:54,000 --> 00:27:57,799
label it a curse. It is psychologically easier for the

558
00:27:57,799 --> 00:28:01,079
public to blame a glowing, magical blue rock than to

559
00:28:01,160 --> 00:28:04,880
confront the fragile, often brutal, and unstable nature of economics

560
00:28:04,880 --> 00:28:05,519
and politics.

561
00:28:05,599 --> 00:28:08,039
Speaker 1: That is such a short point. Blaming the blue rock

562
00:28:08,119 --> 00:28:11,319
is so much easier than analyzing the socioeconomic factors that

563
00:28:11,400 --> 00:28:12,519
lead to a bloody revolution.

564
00:28:12,720 --> 00:28:14,039
Speaker 2: It simplifies the chaos.

565
00:28:14,119 --> 00:28:15,960
Speaker 1: And before we move on from the ancient world and

566
00:28:16,039 --> 00:28:19,319
ancient artifacts entirely, we have a quick, honorable mention from

567
00:28:19,319 --> 00:28:22,359
our source material that perfectly ties these historical themes together.

568
00:28:22,519 --> 00:28:24,319
Speaker 2: The Iceman, the Curse of Atsi.

569
00:28:24,359 --> 00:28:27,000
Speaker 1: The Iceman. This is a five thy three hundred year

570
00:28:27,000 --> 00:28:28,960
old mummy, a man who is brutally murdered in the

571
00:28:28,960 --> 00:28:31,640
Alps with an arrow to the back, who seemingly took

572
00:28:31,680 --> 00:28:34,519
revenge on the modern researchers and hikers who discovered him.

573
00:28:34,720 --> 00:28:37,559
Speaker 2: The Iceman case is only briefly mentioned in the Countdown,

574
00:28:37,720 --> 00:28:40,640
but it acts as a perfect modern parallel to the

575
00:28:40,720 --> 00:28:45,079
King Tatankamo narrative in what way our source text describes

576
00:28:45,119 --> 00:28:47,799
it as a text bookcase of a dark ritual and

577
00:28:47,839 --> 00:28:51,000
a violent death leading to a restless spirit stalking and

578
00:28:51,039 --> 00:28:53,759
punishing those who disturb its remains in the modern.

579
00:28:53,480 --> 00:28:56,119
Speaker 1: Era right because the people who found him didn't fare

580
00:28:56,160 --> 00:28:56,640
too well.

581
00:28:57,039 --> 00:29:00,160
Speaker 2: Several people associated with finding and steadying Atzi diet in

582
00:29:00,160 --> 00:29:03,960
subsequent accidents. Whether it is a revered pharaoh resting in

583
00:29:04,000 --> 00:29:08,319
a golden sarcophagus or a murdered anonymous man frozen in

584
00:29:08,359 --> 00:29:12,599
a glacier, humanity harbors a deep seated, unshakable belief that

585
00:29:12,720 --> 00:29:17,599
profound violence leads an indelible, dangerous stain on the physical world, a.

586
00:29:17,599 --> 00:29:20,039
Speaker 1: Dark stain that refuses to be washed away no matter

587
00:29:20,079 --> 00:29:21,160
how much time passes.

588
00:29:21,200 --> 00:29:22,400
Speaker 2: Precisely, but you know.

589
00:29:22,400 --> 00:29:25,079
Speaker 1: We don't just see this phenomenon in ancient history or

590
00:29:25,119 --> 00:29:28,119
among royal European bloodlines. We also see it in the

591
00:29:28,160 --> 00:29:29,079
modern equivalent of.

592
00:29:29,079 --> 00:29:30,759
Speaker 2: Royalty celebrity culture.

593
00:29:30,880 --> 00:29:34,359
Speaker 1: Yes, we're moving from the ancient pursuit of gold and

594
00:29:34,400 --> 00:29:37,759
glory to the modern pursuit of fame and exploring how

595
00:29:37,799 --> 00:29:41,279
the spotlight itself might just be cursed. Let's talk about

596
00:29:41,319 --> 00:29:44,359
the spectacle of tragedy in Hollywood, on the stage and

597
00:29:44,440 --> 00:29:46,160
in the realm of modern superstition.

598
00:29:46,519 --> 00:29:49,880
Speaker 2: The public facing figures of our era, the movie stars,

599
00:29:49,960 --> 00:29:55,000
the politicians, the elite athletes, become massive magnets for cursed

600
00:29:55,079 --> 00:29:58,880
narratives whenever sudden tragedy strikes them in the public eye.

601
00:29:58,960 --> 00:30:00,799
Speaker 1: Because they feel larger than life.

602
00:30:00,559 --> 00:30:03,799
Speaker 2: Because their lives are so visible, their deaths require a

603
00:30:03,880 --> 00:30:05,200
larger than life explanation.

604
00:30:05,359 --> 00:30:08,680
Speaker 1: And there is perhaps no greater more mythologized tragedy in

605
00:30:08,720 --> 00:30:11,440
early Hollywood than the death of James Dean and the

606
00:30:11,440 --> 00:30:13,720
subsequent curse of the Little Bastard.

607
00:30:13,279 --> 00:30:15,000
Speaker 2: An iconic American tragedy.

608
00:30:15,039 --> 00:30:18,480
Speaker 1: On September thirtieth, nineteen fifty five, James Dean, who was

609
00:30:18,519 --> 00:30:22,680
a rapidly rising, incredibly charismatic Hollywood star the poster boy

610
00:30:22,680 --> 00:30:26,000
for teenage rebellion, was killed in a horrific car crash.

611
00:30:25,799 --> 00:30:26,559
Speaker 2: So young too.

612
00:30:26,759 --> 00:30:29,880
Speaker 1: He was only twenty four years old, an entire life,

613
00:30:29,920 --> 00:30:33,359
an entire legendary career, cut short in a split second.

614
00:30:33,680 --> 00:30:36,880
He was driving his brand new silver Porsche of five

615
00:30:36,880 --> 00:30:40,000
point fifty, a beautiful machine that had the words little

616
00:30:40,039 --> 00:30:42,160
Bastard painted right on the rear.

617
00:30:42,400 --> 00:30:44,279
Speaker 2: The details of the crash are quite heroin.

618
00:30:44,759 --> 00:30:47,119
Speaker 1: According to the accounts in the source, Dean was driving

619
00:30:47,200 --> 00:30:50,799
at speeds of ninety miles per hour, aggressively passing cars

620
00:30:50,839 --> 00:30:54,440
along the highway. To any onlookers, it must have looked

621
00:30:54,480 --> 00:30:57,039
like a silver rocket flying down the road right up

622
00:30:57,119 --> 00:30:58,640
until the devastating impact.

623
00:30:58,880 --> 00:31:02,480
Speaker 2: The sudden, violent death of such a young, vibrant cultural

624
00:31:02,680 --> 00:31:05,359
icon was a massive shock to the American public.

625
00:31:05,440 --> 00:31:08,039
Speaker 1: Yeah, the grief was palpable, But the story didn't end

626
00:31:08,079 --> 00:31:08,759
with the crash.

627
00:31:08,920 --> 00:31:12,680
Speaker 2: No. What elevates this event from a tragic, reckless accident

628
00:31:12,720 --> 00:31:17,000
to a legendary curse is what allegedly happened after the crash.

629
00:31:17,400 --> 00:31:19,880
The tragedy connected to the metal of the Little Bastard

630
00:31:19,960 --> 00:31:20,640
was far from over.

631
00:31:20,799 --> 00:31:23,119
Speaker 1: It's like the car itself became infected with his death,

632
00:31:23,200 --> 00:31:25,559
like the metal absorbed the trauma of the impact.

633
00:31:25,720 --> 00:31:27,240
Speaker 2: That's a very evocative way to put it.

634
00:31:27,480 --> 00:31:30,920
Speaker 1: For example, while the mangled, crushed wreckage of the Porsche

635
00:31:30,960 --> 00:31:34,240
is being stored in a garage, a fire suddenly broke out,

636
00:31:34,480 --> 00:31:38,640
severely damaging the garage without any logical or identified explanation

637
00:31:38,839 --> 00:31:42,599
spontaneous fire. But the scariest part, the part that truly

638
00:31:42,680 --> 00:31:46,000
cements the curse, is what happened when the ruined car

639
00:31:46,119 --> 00:31:50,079
was parted out. Pieces of the Little Bastard were sold off,

640
00:31:50,279 --> 00:31:53,960
repurposed and put into other vehicles, and those specific parts

641
00:31:54,039 --> 00:31:56,599
seemingly wreaks lethal havoc wherever they went.

642
00:31:57,319 --> 00:32:00,880
Speaker 2: The source notes that severe injury and even death befill

643
00:32:00,960 --> 00:32:04,759
the subsequent drivers who used pieces repurposed from Dean's car,

644
00:32:05,079 --> 00:32:05,720
like the engine.

645
00:32:05,799 --> 00:32:06,000
Speaker 1: Right.

646
00:32:06,079 --> 00:32:09,079
Speaker 2: Yes. Doctor William Estrich, for instance, used the engine from

647
00:32:09,079 --> 00:32:11,920
the Little Bastard into his own racing car and subsequently

648
00:32:11,920 --> 00:32:15,400
got into a severe crippling accident. I analyzed this as

649
00:32:15,400 --> 00:32:17,839
a sort of intense psychological contagent effect.

650
00:32:17,880 --> 00:32:19,519
Speaker 1: It's a mechanical virus.

651
00:32:19,200 --> 00:32:22,200
Speaker 2: Exactly, well, perhaps not a literal virus, but a narrative one.

652
00:32:22,240 --> 00:32:23,920
Speaker 1: The story that spreads.

653
00:32:23,799 --> 00:32:26,720
Speaker 2: The car's aura of death born from the trauma of

654
00:32:26,759 --> 00:32:31,400
a highly publicized, deeply mourned crash seemingly infected the perception

655
00:32:31,480 --> 00:32:32,440
of other vehicles.

656
00:32:32,599 --> 00:32:34,720
Speaker 1: We project the tragedy onto the machine.

657
00:32:35,039 --> 00:32:38,039
Speaker 2: We want the car to be evil because the alternative

658
00:32:38,119 --> 00:32:41,839
is accepting that a talented young man simply made a

659
00:32:41,880 --> 00:32:44,279
fatal mistake regarding his speed.

660
00:32:44,480 --> 00:32:47,400
Speaker 1: It's easier to blame a haunted car than a reckless choice.

661
00:32:47,480 --> 00:32:50,720
Speaker 2: And the story concludes with the ultimate mythical disappearing act.

662
00:32:50,799 --> 00:32:52,200
Speaker 1: Oh, this is the best part.

663
00:32:52,519 --> 00:32:56,160
Speaker 2: Five years after James Dean's death, while being transported, the

664
00:32:56,200 --> 00:32:59,119
remnants of the Little Bastard vanished without a single trace,

665
00:32:59,319 --> 00:33:02,599
just gone. The car remains completely missing to this very day,

666
00:33:03,039 --> 00:33:06,480
allowing it to transition perfectly from physical evidence into an

667
00:33:06,559 --> 00:33:07,440
untouchable myth.

668
00:33:07,599 --> 00:33:10,759
Speaker 1: It is the ultimate ghost story for the American automobile age,

669
00:33:11,119 --> 00:33:13,640
a haunted machine that vanishes into the fog.

670
00:33:14,319 --> 00:33:14,839
Speaker 2: Very politic.

671
00:33:15,279 --> 00:33:17,759
Speaker 1: Now, staying in the realm of Hollywood, we have to

672
00:33:17,799 --> 00:33:20,799
look at a curse that is deeply unsettling because it

673
00:33:20,839 --> 00:33:23,920
involves the actual creation of a piece of horror media.

674
00:33:24,480 --> 00:33:27,000
I am talking about the Poltergeist Curse.

675
00:33:26,799 --> 00:33:28,480
Speaker 2: A notorious Hollywood legend.

676
00:33:28,759 --> 00:33:32,119
Speaker 1: This film franchise is a massive staple for horror fans,

677
00:33:32,319 --> 00:33:35,799
focusing on a suburban family plagued by malevolent spirits after

678
00:33:35,880 --> 00:33:38,720
moving into a tract home built over a burial ground.

679
00:33:38,960 --> 00:33:39,480
They're here.

680
00:33:39,640 --> 00:33:41,880
Speaker 2: It's an iconic piece of cinema.

681
00:33:41,359 --> 00:33:46,599
Speaker 1: But the film has a notoriously dark, devastating legacy off screen,

682
00:33:47,119 --> 00:33:50,920
and honestly, the inciting incident for this curse genuinely horrifies me.

683
00:33:51,200 --> 00:33:54,319
The prop skeletons, according to the countdown. To save money

684
00:33:54,319 --> 00:33:57,839
on the production budget, the filmmakers used actual, real human

685
00:33:57,880 --> 00:34:00,000
skeletons as props in The Muddy Pors.

686
00:34:01,079 --> 00:34:04,240
Speaker 2: This raises an important question regarding the ethical boundaries in

687
00:34:04,279 --> 00:34:07,039
the creation of art and how those breaches of ethics

688
00:34:07,240 --> 00:34:08,599
are perceived by the public.

689
00:34:08,639 --> 00:34:12,000
Speaker 1: It's so hypocritical too, how so well, the film itself

690
00:34:12,000 --> 00:34:15,119
contains explicit themes that are highly critical of treating human

691
00:34:15,159 --> 00:34:19,679
remains disrespectfully. The entire plot hinges on a greedy real

692
00:34:19,800 --> 00:34:23,079
estate developer refusing to move the bodies in a cemetery.

693
00:34:23,239 --> 00:34:27,159
Speaker 2: Yes, the narrative condemns the very action the production took, Yet.

694
00:34:27,000 --> 00:34:30,119
Speaker 1: The production allegedly engaged in that exact practice just to

695
00:34:30,119 --> 00:34:31,039
save a few dollars.

696
00:34:31,079 --> 00:34:33,920
Speaker 2: This profound disrespect for the dead led many fans and

697
00:34:33,960 --> 00:34:37,840
observers to firmly believe that the film set was genuinely cursed.

698
00:34:38,239 --> 00:34:41,360
They drew a direct supernatural line between the use of

699
00:34:41,360 --> 00:34:44,800
those real skeletons and the tragic, untimely deaths of two

700
00:34:44,880 --> 00:34:46,079
of the film's young stars.

701
00:34:46,360 --> 00:34:49,840
Speaker 1: We really need to pause and acknowledge the overwhelming sadness

702
00:34:49,840 --> 00:34:51,639
of those deaths, because it is heartbreaking.

703
00:34:51,719 --> 00:34:52,320
Speaker 2: It truly is.

704
00:34:52,760 --> 00:34:56,039
Speaker 1: Heather O'Rourke, the angelic little girl who appeared in all

705
00:34:56,039 --> 00:34:59,639
three Poltergeist films, the face of the franchise, died at

706
00:34:59,639 --> 00:35:03,039
the incredibly young age of twelve from cardiac arrest just

707
00:35:03,159 --> 00:35:05,320
four months before the final film's release.

708
00:35:05,800 --> 00:35:09,079
Speaker 2: A twelve year old suffering cardiac arrest is a profound,

709
00:35:09,320 --> 00:35:13,199
unfathomable tragedy. It is the kind of event that breaks

710
00:35:13,239 --> 00:35:13,920
a community.

711
00:35:14,039 --> 00:35:16,400
Speaker 1: And then you have Dominie Dunn, who played the teenage

712
00:35:16,440 --> 00:35:19,920
sister in the original movie. She was brutally murdered strangled

713
00:35:19,920 --> 00:35:23,159
by her ex boyfriend just months after the initial film premiered.

714
00:35:23,280 --> 00:35:25,639
Speaker 2: The sheer weight of that grief is suffocating.

715
00:35:26,039 --> 00:35:29,840
Speaker 1: When you hear about sequential, horrific tragedies striking young women

716
00:35:29,920 --> 00:35:32,679
associated with a horror film, it's so hard not to

717
00:35:32,719 --> 00:35:35,760
look for a supernatural reason to believe that a line

718
00:35:35,800 --> 00:35:38,559
was crossed with those real skeletons that invited a dark,

719
00:35:38,599 --> 00:35:40,639
retaliatory energy into their lives.

720
00:35:40,880 --> 00:35:44,760
Speaker 2: The human toll is devastating, but from an analytical perspective,

721
00:35:45,280 --> 00:35:49,159
it forces us to ask, does violating the sacred, like

722
00:35:49,360 --> 00:35:54,480
using real human remains for entertainment, invite a literal supernatural darkness?

723
00:35:54,800 --> 00:35:59,360
Or is this simply human psychology desperately linking unrelated, horrific

724
00:35:59,440 --> 00:36:03,159
and statistic tragic deaths to a movie that just happened

725
00:36:03,159 --> 00:36:04,079
to be about ghosts and.

726
00:36:04,039 --> 00:36:06,599
Speaker 1: Demons, desperately searching for a reason.

727
00:36:06,639 --> 00:36:10,199
Speaker 2: Again, our brains are hardwired to find patterns, especially when

728
00:36:10,199 --> 00:36:14,920
we are collectively grieving the senseless, unfair loss of young life.

729
00:36:15,000 --> 00:36:17,000
If we can blame a curse, we don't have to

730
00:36:17,039 --> 00:36:20,679
phase the terrifying randomness of medical emergencies or domestic violence.

731
00:36:20,760 --> 00:36:23,440
Speaker 1: Pattern recognition as a coping mechanism in the face of

732
00:36:23,480 --> 00:36:26,199
immense grief that makes so much sense, even if it's

733
00:36:26,239 --> 00:36:29,400
incredibly bleak. Let's pivot to a different kind of performance, heart,

734
00:36:29,440 --> 00:36:32,719
one with rules so strict and steeped in history that

735
00:36:32,800 --> 00:36:35,760
breaking them is said to invite disaster. Ah the theater,

736
00:36:36,000 --> 00:36:39,159
the curse of the Scottish play. We are talking, of course,

737
00:36:39,159 --> 00:36:40,880
about William Shakespeare's.

738
00:36:40,360 --> 00:36:42,559
Speaker 2: Macbeth, a tradition older than Hollywood by far.

739
00:36:42,960 --> 00:36:46,400
Speaker 1: In the theater world, there are countless quirky superstitions. You

740
00:36:46,440 --> 00:36:48,599
tell someone to break a leg instead of wishing them luck,

741
00:36:49,000 --> 00:36:52,000
but uttering the actual name of this specific play under

742
00:36:52,039 --> 00:36:55,519
the roof of a theater will draw immediate genuine fear

743
00:36:55,639 --> 00:36:57,639
and ire from seasoned Thespians.

744
00:36:58,400 --> 00:37:01,840
Speaker 2: Tradition strictly dictates that cast and crew must refer to

745
00:37:01,840 --> 00:37:06,760
the work only as the Scottish play to avoid inevitable mishap, injury,

746
00:37:06,920 --> 00:37:11,280
or financial disaster. The persistence of this superstition across centuries

747
00:37:11,559 --> 00:37:12,360
is remarkable.

748
00:37:12,440 --> 00:37:16,599
Speaker 1: I just love the deep, dramatic theatricality of this. The

749
00:37:16,639 --> 00:37:18,320
alleged source of the curse.

750
00:37:18,119 --> 00:37:19,559
Speaker 2: Is wild the Witches.

751
00:37:19,719 --> 00:37:23,679
Speaker 1: Yes, it is attributed to actual witches who were supposedly

752
00:37:23,800 --> 00:37:27,760
deeply displeased with Shakespeare's portrayal of their coven. The rumor

753
00:37:27,800 --> 00:37:30,960
is that he used real, authentic dark incantations in the

754
00:37:31,000 --> 00:37:34,599
dialogue of the play, angering actual practitioners of magic, and.

755
00:37:34,599 --> 00:37:36,440
Speaker 2: The supposed consequences are severe.

756
00:37:36,559 --> 00:37:39,440
Speaker 1: Because of this, a staggering list of calamities has been

757
00:37:39,480 --> 00:37:42,199
attributed to the curse over the centuries. We're talking about

758
00:37:42,239 --> 00:37:46,039
everything from multiple theater companies completely folding and going bankrupt,

759
00:37:46,360 --> 00:37:49,440
to unexplained fires burning down stages.

760
00:37:49,039 --> 00:37:51,599
Speaker 2: And injuries during the performances themselves.

761
00:37:51,440 --> 00:37:56,360
Speaker 1: Right even accidental deaths caused by actors using real sharpened

762
00:37:56,440 --> 00:37:59,800
daggers instead of props during performances. And the reach of

763
00:37:59,840 --> 00:38:03,440
this curse isn't just historical, it is entirely modern too.

764
00:38:04,000 --> 00:38:05,320
Speaker 2: The Oscars incident.

765
00:38:05,000 --> 00:38:08,320
Speaker 1: According to our source, comedian Chris Rock allegedly triggered the

766
00:38:08,360 --> 00:38:11,440
curse at the Dolby Theater during the Academy Awards, just

767
00:38:11,559 --> 00:38:15,039
moments before he was infamously slapped on stage by Will Smith.

768
00:38:15,320 --> 00:38:20,719
Speaker 2: The juxtaposition of ancient Elizabethan theatrical superstition being applied to

769
00:38:21,199 --> 00:38:23,639
modern Hollywood celebrity drama is striking.

770
00:38:23,800 --> 00:38:25,239
Speaker 1: It's surreal, But the.

771
00:38:25,199 --> 00:38:28,639
Speaker 2: Psychology here is deeply rooted in the inherent nature of performance.

772
00:38:29,719 --> 00:38:32,880
High stress environments where so much relies on exact timing,

773
00:38:33,280 --> 00:38:37,199
fragile memory, and countless uncontrollable variables like lighting and audience

774
00:38:37,239 --> 00:38:40,880
reaction naturally breed deep superstitions.

775
00:38:40,199 --> 00:38:42,239
Speaker 1: Because anything could go wrong exactly.

776
00:38:42,480 --> 00:38:45,039
Speaker 2: Actors are engaged in a high wire act every night.

777
00:38:45,079 --> 00:38:47,880
Speaker 1: And the cure for saying the name is hilariously specific.

778
00:38:48,039 --> 00:38:49,639
It is a full physical ritual.

779
00:38:49,719 --> 00:38:50,840
Speaker 2: What is the exact process?

780
00:38:51,079 --> 00:38:53,639
Speaker 1: If you are ever caught slipping up and saying the

781
00:38:53,679 --> 00:38:56,679
title of the play inside a theater, you have to

782
00:38:56,760 --> 00:39:00,320
physically run out of the building, spin around three times,

783
00:39:00,599 --> 00:39:02,960
and then either spit on the ground or swear.

784
00:39:02,679 --> 00:39:04,119
Speaker 2: Loudly, very dramatic.

785
00:39:04,199 --> 00:39:07,679
Speaker 1: It's like a playground game, but performed by serious, classically

786
00:39:07,679 --> 00:39:08,360
trained actors.

787
00:39:08,480 --> 00:39:11,599
Speaker 2: While it sounds comical, it acts as a vital psychological

788
00:39:11,639 --> 00:39:12,320
reset button.

789
00:39:12,400 --> 00:39:13,280
Speaker 1: A reset button.

790
00:39:13,440 --> 00:39:19,039
Speaker 2: Yes. By performing a physical, highly specific, and slightly ridiculous ritual,

791
00:39:19,440 --> 00:39:22,519
the performer breaks the tension. They regain a sense of

792
00:39:22,599 --> 00:39:26,480
active control over the uncontrollable anxieties and variables of live theater.

793
00:39:26,639 --> 00:39:28,000
Speaker 1: They shake it off literally.

794
00:39:28,119 --> 00:39:31,280
Speaker 2: The ritual banishes the fear, allowing them to return to

795
00:39:31,320 --> 00:39:32,840
the stage completely focused.

796
00:39:32,960 --> 00:39:35,360
Speaker 1: We do rituals to feel safe in the dark. I

797
00:39:35,400 --> 00:39:39,119
love that. And before we move to our final massive

798
00:39:39,239 --> 00:39:42,559
architectural story, our source material drops a couple more honorable

799
00:39:42,599 --> 00:39:45,960
mentions that demonstrate how curse narratives infect both the highest

800
00:39:46,000 --> 00:39:49,199
levels of politics and the most agonizing realms of sports.

801
00:39:49,599 --> 00:39:50,920
Speaker 2: The Kennedys and the Cubs.

802
00:39:51,239 --> 00:39:55,360
Speaker 1: First, the Kennedy Curse. The text notes the long string

803
00:39:55,400 --> 00:40:00,199
of unspeakable public tragedies that followed that famous American political family,

804
00:40:00,599 --> 00:40:04,039
but it specifically highlights the timeline of the assassination of

805
00:40:04,079 --> 00:40:04,840
President John F.

806
00:40:04,920 --> 00:40:09,239
Speaker 2: Kennedy exactly one point zero zero pm Central Standard time. Yes,

807
00:40:09,719 --> 00:40:13,480
the highlighting of that exact minute is a crucial detail.

808
00:40:13,519 --> 00:40:14,360
Speaker 1: Why do you think that is?

809
00:40:14,760 --> 00:40:18,840
Speaker 2: Why focus on this specific time? Because trauma freezes time.

810
00:40:19,400 --> 00:40:23,360
When a deeply beloved public figure is assassinated in broad daylight,

811
00:40:23,760 --> 00:40:27,599
the collective consciousness of a nation stops. That minute becomes

812
00:40:27,599 --> 00:40:29,039
a permanent national scar.

813
00:40:29,239 --> 00:40:31,679
Speaker 1: It's the moment the world stopped making sense. And when

814
00:40:31,719 --> 00:40:35,239
you have a family line marked by repeated, devastating tragedies,

815
00:40:35,320 --> 00:40:37,440
we point to those frozen timestamps and call it a.

816
00:40:37,480 --> 00:40:39,639
Speaker 2: Curse because the alternative is unbearable.

817
00:40:39,719 --> 00:40:42,800
Speaker 1: That random, paiotic violence can strike anyone, even the most

818
00:40:42,800 --> 00:40:44,880
powerful people on earth, at any time is just too

819
00:40:45,000 --> 00:40:47,599
terrifying for the public to accept. We need a Kennedy

820
00:40:47,639 --> 00:40:49,159
curse to explain Kennedy grief.

821
00:40:49,159 --> 00:40:51,559
Speaker 2: And then we pivot to something entirely different but functionally

822
00:40:51,599 --> 00:40:52,559
identical on.

823
00:40:52,559 --> 00:40:55,079
Speaker 1: A wildly different note, we have the curse of the

824
00:40:55,079 --> 00:40:56,719
Billygoat and baseball.

825
00:40:56,480 --> 00:40:57,800
Speaker 2: A classic sports curse.

826
00:40:58,079 --> 00:41:01,800
Speaker 1: The Chicago Cubs supposedly insulted a man and his pet goat,

827
00:41:02,159 --> 00:41:04,920
and as a result, they didn't win a World Series

828
00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:07,159
for a grueling one hundred years.

829
00:41:07,320 --> 00:41:11,480
Speaker 2: The tonal contrast between the tragic assassination of a president

830
00:41:11,679 --> 00:41:15,280
and a sports franchise failing to win a trophy is jarring.

831
00:41:15,440 --> 00:41:17,760
Speaker 1: It is a bit whiplash inducing.

832
00:41:17,480 --> 00:41:21,239
Speaker 2: Yet they serve the exact same sociological function within their

833
00:41:21,239 --> 00:41:22,199
respective spheres.

834
00:41:22,599 --> 00:41:25,639
Speaker 1: The billy goat story is so wonderfully petty, too, it

835
00:41:25,719 --> 00:41:28,679
really is. After the Cubs lost the series to the Tigers,

836
00:41:28,800 --> 00:41:30,679
the guy who owned the goat actually took the time

837
00:41:30,719 --> 00:41:33,639
to send a formal telegram to the Cubs organization, asking

838
00:41:33,679 --> 00:41:34,559
who stinks now?

839
00:41:34,840 --> 00:41:35,599
Speaker 2: A telegram.

840
00:41:35,679 --> 00:41:39,719
Speaker 1: The sheer pettiness of a curse delivered via telegram. It's amazing, yet.

841
00:41:39,559 --> 00:41:42,960
Speaker 2: It ties everything we've discussed together perfectly. Whether we are

842
00:41:42,960 --> 00:41:46,000
trying to process the world altering political assassination of a

843
00:41:46,079 --> 00:41:50,119
national leader or trying to rationalize a century of heartbreaking

844
00:41:50,159 --> 00:41:53,760
sports failures by a beloved local baseball team.

845
00:41:53,559 --> 00:41:56,360
Speaker 1: We use curses to explain the inexplicable.

846
00:41:56,480 --> 00:41:59,119
Speaker 2: We use them to explain the agonizing loss of our heroes,

847
00:41:59,159 --> 00:42:01,119
be they political, eye cons or athletes.

848
00:42:01,440 --> 00:42:04,840
Speaker 1: Okay, we have covered an incredible amount of ground today.

849
00:42:05,239 --> 00:42:12,079
We've talked about cursed dolls, haunted paintings, plundered gold, bloody diamonds,

850
00:42:12,480 --> 00:42:14,320
and the ghosts of Hollywood highways.

851
00:42:14,519 --> 00:42:17,119
Speaker 2: We've spanned centuries and continents.

852
00:42:17,400 --> 00:42:19,679
Speaker 1: But for our final segment, we are going to look

853
00:42:19,719 --> 00:42:22,000
at the architecture of atonement.

854
00:42:21,639 --> 00:42:22,920
Speaker 2: A fascinating concept.

855
00:42:23,119 --> 00:42:25,719
Speaker 1: We are going to explore a curse that wasn't placed

856
00:42:25,760 --> 00:42:29,599
by a wronged witch, an ancient civilization, or a spurned

857
00:42:29,679 --> 00:42:33,360
goat owner. It was an entirely self inflicted curse that

858
00:42:33,480 --> 00:42:37,159
manifested as a massive, sprawling, tangible.

859
00:42:36,960 --> 00:42:39,000
Speaker 2: Physical structure, The Winchester House.

860
00:42:39,280 --> 00:42:41,280
Speaker 1: We're talking about the Winchester Mystery House curse.

861
00:42:41,519 --> 00:42:44,960
Speaker 2: This is perhaps the most profound psychological exploration on our

862
00:42:45,119 --> 00:42:46,079
entire list today.

863
00:42:46,119 --> 00:42:47,719
Speaker 1: The scale of it is just unbelievable.

864
00:42:47,760 --> 00:42:51,119
Speaker 2: The Winchester Mystery House is a sprawling, utterly baffling mansion

865
00:42:51,159 --> 00:42:54,960
located in California, features hundreds of rooms, literal trap doors

866
00:42:54,960 --> 00:42:58,199
that drop into nothingness, maze like passages designed to confuse

867
00:42:58,559 --> 00:43:01,480
and staircases, doors and windows that open up to solid

868
00:43:01,519 --> 00:43:02,679
walls or sheer drops.

869
00:43:02,880 --> 00:43:04,559
Speaker 1: It defies every logical rule of.

870
00:43:04,599 --> 00:43:06,440
Speaker 2: Architecture, absolutely every single one.

871
00:43:06,519 --> 00:43:10,480
Speaker 1: It is a towering monument to madness, and the scale

872
00:43:10,480 --> 00:43:13,199
of the labor involved is just staggering. The house was

873
00:43:13,239 --> 00:43:16,559
constructed by one woman, Sarah Winchester, over the course of

874
00:43:16,679 --> 00:43:18,599
thirty eight relentless years.

875
00:43:18,400 --> 00:43:19,400
Speaker 2: Almost four decades.

876
00:43:19,599 --> 00:43:23,159
Speaker 1: Imagine that thirty eight years of NonStop, two hundred and

877
00:43:23,159 --> 00:43:26,840
forty seven construction, hammer's ringing saws, cutting day and night

878
00:43:26,880 --> 00:43:30,360
for decades, and the wildest part of the entire endeavor

879
00:43:30,440 --> 00:43:34,239
no plans. There were no blueprints. Usually a building starts

880
00:43:34,280 --> 00:43:38,119
with pairful drawings, engineering documents detailing what the finished product

881
00:43:38,159 --> 00:43:40,840
will look like and ensuring it won't collapse. But the

882
00:43:40,880 --> 00:43:43,519
source material notes that the builders of this mansion simply

883
00:43:43,559 --> 00:43:45,599
made it up as they went along, day by day,

884
00:43:45,840 --> 00:43:46,800
room by room.

885
00:43:46,719 --> 00:43:49,960
Speaker 2: And the motivation behind that endless construction is the core

886
00:43:50,039 --> 00:43:51,239
of the curse legend.

887
00:43:51,280 --> 00:43:55,400
Speaker 1: Says Sarah Winchester believes she was deeply, irrevocably cursed. She

888
00:43:55,559 --> 00:43:58,320
believed that if the sound of construction ever stopped, she

889
00:43:58,360 --> 00:44:01,719
would face immediate death at the heads of spirits.

890
00:44:01,480 --> 00:44:03,280
Speaker 2: We have to look at the source of her immense

891
00:44:03,320 --> 00:44:05,920
wealth to understand the depths of her terror.

892
00:44:06,039 --> 00:44:07,559
Speaker 1: Where did all that money come from.

893
00:44:07,679 --> 00:44:11,159
Speaker 2: Her massive fortune was in her own eyes, blood money.

894
00:44:12,079 --> 00:44:14,400
She had inherited it from her late husband, And that

895
00:44:14,519 --> 00:44:17,480
vast fortune was earned directly from the creation and sale

896
00:44:17,519 --> 00:44:18,599
of the Winchester rifle.

897
00:44:18,840 --> 00:44:20,599
Speaker 1: Ah, the gun that won the West.

898
00:44:20,760 --> 00:44:24,360
Speaker 2: Yes, a firearm so prevalent and lethal it was often

899
00:44:24,440 --> 00:44:27,159
referred to exactly that way, which is a sterilized way

900
00:44:27,199 --> 00:44:30,519
of saying it was responsible for an incalculable amount of death.

901
00:44:30,639 --> 00:44:32,840
Speaker 1: So what does this all mean for Sarah. She's sitting

902
00:44:32,880 --> 00:44:35,400
alone in a mansion on a mountain of money, and

903
00:44:35,440 --> 00:44:37,920
she knows that money was built on a mountain of corpses.

904
00:44:38,159 --> 00:44:42,760
Speaker 2: It means we are looking at the physical manifestation of immense, crushing,

905
00:44:42,960 --> 00:44:47,559
inescapable guilt. The confusing, nonsensical layout of the mansion was

906
00:44:47,599 --> 00:44:51,920
supposedly her desperate, ongoing attempt to physically confound and hide

907
00:44:51,920 --> 00:44:54,119
from the vengeful ghosts of all the people killed by

908
00:44:54,119 --> 00:44:55,119
Winchester rifles.

909
00:44:55,199 --> 00:44:56,199
Speaker 1: She was trying to trick them.

910
00:44:56,280 --> 00:45:00,360
Speaker 2: She believed these spirits stalked her every waking moment, demanding justice.

911
00:45:00,559 --> 00:45:03,440
This isn't just a traditional ghost story about a haunting.

912
00:45:03,760 --> 00:45:06,719
She built a physical wooden labyrinth to hide from the

913
00:45:06,760 --> 00:45:08,519
blood on her family's hands.

914
00:45:08,440 --> 00:45:10,119
Speaker 1: The physical weight of that guilt.

915
00:45:10,519 --> 00:45:13,800
Speaker 2: The house is a sprawling monument to a deeply troubled conscience.

916
00:45:14,519 --> 00:45:18,840
It entirely blurs the line between a paranormal haunting and severe,

917
00:45:18,920 --> 00:45:23,920
debilitating psychological trauma, manifesting as an obsessive, compulsive building project.

918
00:45:24,079 --> 00:45:26,880
Speaker 1: Thirty eight years of hammers and saws just trying to

919
00:45:26,960 --> 00:45:29,800
drown out the guilt ridden voices in her head. It

920
00:45:29,920 --> 00:45:31,039
is profoundly sad.

921
00:45:31,159 --> 00:45:33,679
Speaker 2: It's a tragic story of isolation, and the.

922
00:45:33,639 --> 00:45:36,159
Speaker 1: Source text points out that even since our passing, odd

923
00:45:36,159 --> 00:45:39,239
occurrences have continually been noted to take place in the mansion.

924
00:45:39,599 --> 00:45:43,000
Tour guides and visitors report hearing heavy footsteps and empty halls,

925
00:45:43,039 --> 00:45:48,960
disembodied voices, seeing lights flicker without cause, hearing unexplained ghostly music, and.

926
00:45:48,880 --> 00:45:52,519
Speaker 2: Sometimes even witnessing full physical manifestations of spirits.

927
00:45:52,679 --> 00:45:56,440
Speaker 1: It's so fascinating to me that icons of logic, rationality

928
00:45:56,480 --> 00:45:59,320
and the debunking of illusion, like the great Harry Houdini

929
00:45:59,719 --> 00:46:02,199
were drawn to investigate this very house.

930
00:46:02,280 --> 00:46:04,480
Speaker 2: Houdini is the perfect foil for this house.

931
00:46:04,440 --> 00:46:07,159
Speaker 1: Right Houdini, a man who spent his life exposing fake

932
00:46:07,280 --> 00:46:10,880
mediums and debunking the supernatural, walking through a maze built

933
00:46:11,039 --> 00:46:13,000
entirely out of irrational fear and grief.

934
00:46:13,440 --> 00:46:17,880
Speaker 2: Houdini's presence there is the perfect metaphor. The Winchester House

935
00:46:17,960 --> 00:46:21,280
stands as the ultimate synthesis of our entire discussion today.

936
00:46:21,880 --> 00:46:25,960
It shows how profound guilt, massive wealth, and the overwhelming

937
00:46:26,000 --> 00:46:29,800
fear of unseen retribution can literally shape the physical world

938
00:46:29,880 --> 00:46:33,440
around us, creating a monument to fear that outlasts the

939
00:46:33,440 --> 00:46:34,400
person who built it.

940
00:46:34,719 --> 00:46:37,320
Speaker 1: Which brings us finally to the end of our journey. Today,

941
00:46:37,639 --> 00:46:40,639
let's unthread these curses. We've covered so much ground and

942
00:46:40,679 --> 00:46:44,320
traversed so many centuries. We really have, from raggedy dolls

943
00:46:44,360 --> 00:46:47,559
sitting on American couches to Aztec gold buried deep in

944
00:46:47,599 --> 00:46:51,199
the dirt, from silver porsches speeding down the California Highway

945
00:46:51,239 --> 00:46:55,039
to an endless, bizarre mansion built to trap the ghosts

946
00:46:55,039 --> 00:46:56,039
of the American West.

947
00:46:56,199 --> 00:46:59,119
Speaker 2: When we bring all these disparate threads together, a clear,

948
00:46:59,480 --> 00:47:03,599
unified picture emerges of the vital human function that curses serve.

949
00:47:03,679 --> 00:47:04,880
Speaker 1: What's the main takeaway for you.

950
00:47:05,119 --> 00:47:08,960
Speaker 2: They give a tangible, narratively satisfying face to abstract bad luck.

951
00:47:09,360 --> 00:47:12,400
They offer us the grim yet comforting assurance that tragedy

952
00:47:12,440 --> 00:47:16,079
is not always just random, meaningless chaos, striking without reason.

953
00:47:16,199 --> 00:47:17,000
Speaker 1: It gives it purpose.

954
00:47:17,400 --> 00:47:21,199
Speaker 2: They tell us that sometimes tragedy is a direct consequence

955
00:47:21,280 --> 00:47:24,559
of a specific action, whether it is stealing from a

956
00:47:24,559 --> 00:47:28,280
sacred tomb, disrespecting human remains on a film set, or

957
00:47:28,360 --> 00:47:32,000
profiting immensely from a deadly weapon. Curses assure us that

958
00:47:32,039 --> 00:47:35,960
there is a cosmic scale out there actively balancing the universe.

959
00:47:36,119 --> 00:47:38,559
Speaker 1: And here's a final provocative thought for you to mull

960
00:47:38,599 --> 00:47:42,960
over as we sign off. We live in a modern, hyperlogical,

961
00:47:43,119 --> 00:47:47,400
deeply scientific world. We carry smartphones with access to all

962
00:47:47,480 --> 00:47:51,000
human knowledge in our pockets, and we build space telescopes

963
00:47:51,039 --> 00:47:52,840
to peer into the origins of the universe.

964
00:47:53,079 --> 00:47:55,000
Speaker 2: We are very scientifically advanced.

965
00:47:55,199 --> 00:47:57,519
Speaker 1: Yet the fact that we still share these stories, that

966
00:47:57,639 --> 00:48:00,559
millions of people still eagerly click on videos about haunted

967
00:48:00,599 --> 00:48:04,159
eBay paintings and cursed diamonds, proves something profound about the

968
00:48:04,239 --> 00:48:04,880
human condition.

969
00:48:05,079 --> 00:48:06,400
Speaker 2: That we still fear the dark.

970
00:48:06,639 --> 00:48:10,079
Speaker 1: It proves that humanity still harbors a deep, primal respect

971
00:48:10,159 --> 00:48:13,880
and a lingering instinctual fear of the unknown. Deep down,

972
00:48:13,960 --> 00:48:16,599
we want to believe the world has hidden magical rules,

973
00:48:16,679 --> 00:48:17,920
even if those rules are.

974
00:48:17,880 --> 00:48:22,599
Speaker 2: Completely terrifying, because a world governed by terrifying supernatural rules

975
00:48:22,760 --> 00:48:25,199
is still somehow less scary than a world with no

976
00:48:25,360 --> 00:48:25,960
rules at all.

977
00:48:26,159 --> 00:48:29,800
Speaker 1: The unknown will always cast a long shadow over human logic,

978
00:48:30,079 --> 00:48:32,280
and we will always use these ghost stories to try

979
00:48:32,320 --> 00:48:34,880
and light a candle within that darkness. Now we want

980
00:48:34,880 --> 00:48:37,880
to hear directly from you, the listener. Do you think

981
00:48:37,960 --> 00:48:42,679
curses are real supernatural forces actively interacting with and shaping

982
00:48:42,719 --> 00:48:46,639
our physical world? Or are they just the complex psychological

983
00:48:46,679 --> 00:48:50,320
stories we tell ourselves to survive at chaotic, unpredictable universe.

984
00:48:50,519 --> 00:48:51,719
Speaker 2: We'd love to know your thoughts.

985
00:48:51,880 --> 00:48:55,440
Speaker 1: Have you ever experienced an undeniable string of cursed bad

986
00:48:55,559 --> 00:48:58,599
luck in your own life that defied all logical explanation.

987
00:48:59,199 --> 00:49:01,000
Leave a comment and let us know exactly where you

988
00:49:01,039 --> 00:49:03,760
stand on the supernatural. Thank you so much for joining

989
00:49:03,800 --> 00:49:06,880
us on this incredible dark journey here on Thrilling Threads.

990
00:49:07,119 --> 00:49:10,079
We promise we have even more fascinating discoveries waiting for

991
00:49:10,119 --> 00:49:12,960
you next time. Stay curious, stay safe, and we will

992
00:49:13,000 --> 00:49:13,440
see you then